3Ware 7500-12 Features Guide

•

Supports up to twelve Ultra

ATA/133 drives with a single PCI

card, enabling up to 2 terabyte

of disk storage

•

StorSwitch

™

non-blocking architec-

ture for reliable, scalable, and high-

performance hardware RAID

•

On-board processor and firmware

provides management for all

RAID functions

•

RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD support

•

64-bit/32-bit PCI-compatible

•

BIOS setup utility and PnP, BBS

compliant bootable BIOS

•

Hot-swap and hot-spare features

for data availability

•

Windows

®

and Linux

®

operating

system support

Escalade

™

7500-12

ATA RAID Controller

Cost Effective Storage Capacity

ATA disk drives are less than half the cost per

megabyte of storage than comparable SCSI

drives. These drives deliver tremendous value in

capacity and reliability, while the Escalade 7500-12

controller delivers the features and performance

previously available only on SCSI or Fibre RAID

systems.

By combining these low cost drives

with the Escalade 7500-12, customers can get

the highest performance RAID 5 for less than

half the cost of a comparable SCSI solution.

Switched Architecture Delivers Highest

Performance RAID

3ware’s StorSwitch architecture applies network

packet switching principles to storage.

In a typical

SCSI architecture the drives share a single bus.

Performance is compromised because drives have

to wait until the bus is free before they can perform

a read or write command.

By contrast, with the

Escalade 7500-12 card, each disk drive has a dedi-

cated bus eliminating the need to wait as other

drives perform read or write commands. The

7500-12 controller can simultaneously write to all

drives delivering much higher performance. This

non-blocking switched architecture reduces the

requirement for expensive on-board cache and

provides both drive and cable fault isolation for

greater system reliability.

Advanced RAID Software and Firmware

The Escalade 7500-12 card includes a built-in

BIOS utility for creating, deleting, verifying and

rebuilding arrays, making installation and set-up

easy. 3DM

™

, 3ware’s web browser-based array

management utility allows local and remote man-

agement and monitoring of arrays and their disks.

It provides e-mail notification of disk array events

and error conditions.

3ware’s advanced firmware delivers many of the

features one expects with more expensive SCSI

drives and controllers, but not typically available in

ATA. These include command re-ordering, elevator

seeks, dynamic sector repair, asynchronous error

messaging and more. The firmware now incorpo-

rates a staggered spin-up for drives that support

this feature. This allows the controller to sequence

the spin-up of drives, reducing the power demands

at boot-up, eliminating excessive wear-and-tear on

the power supply and the need for larger, more

expensive power supplies.

Escalade Sets a New Standard for RAID

The Escalade 7500-12 ATA RAID controller is the

highest performing, highest capacity ATA controller

available.

Its unique switched architecture delivers

performance levels previously only seen with multi-

channel SCSI RAID cards. With this latest addition

to the Escalade 7500 series of RAID controllers,

3ware has revolutionized the world of RAID.

3ware’s Escalade 7500-12 controller is the only ATA RAID controller available that

connects up to twelve ATA/133 hard disk drives.

Delivering unmatched storage capacity

on a single controller, it is ideally suited for storage applications requiring up to two

terabytes of storage.

Delivering superior reliability, scalability and performance, the

Escalade 7500-12 ATA controller sets the new standard for ATA RAID.

7500-12

S

E

R

I

E

S

ESCALADE PRODUCT FEATURES

3Ware 7500-12 Features Guide

3Ware 7500-12 - Escalade RAID Controller Manual

3Ware 7500-12 manual content summary: